


The Beacon to a Sailor

by keepmybook



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drowning, F/M, Pacific Northwest, Post CATWS, Set after DC, bucky is only metaphorically an angel, first fic, pre civil war, revival, tags to come later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-17 16:25:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5877601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepmybook/pseuds/keepmybook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby lives in the Pacific Northwest. For the longest time, the woods that surround her secluded house kept her grounded to her humanity, and as isolated as she is, she likes it here. She's pretty sure that she's happy, and that's good enough to keep her in her house in the woods. </p>
<p>Until one day her canoe flips over, and she swears she sees a guardian angel. Only, angels don't exist. It's her rational side that tells her this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Here Is Where We Say Hello

It happened in a flash. One moment I was sitting in the canoe, but in the next, I was in the water. The first thing that hit me was the cold. I wasn’t expecting it. It almost came out of nowhere, and in that moment where my life hung in the balance, the constant companion of always knowing what to do left me. 

I struggled in the waves. I caught my head above water and gulped as much air as I could. I screamed, but it was a mistake because it released my whole air supply. I fought against the waves, but my arms were losing strength to the cold. My head popped above the water, and I pushed with everything from my lungs for them only to release another scream for help. 

I went under again. This was my last chance. I pumped my legs, and instead of screaming, I took a gulp of air, because I knew that this was it. I was too far away from the shore to swim there, and even if I was close enough, I had no more energy. It was depleting faster than I could resupply it. 

For the third time, my head went under the water, and I tried my hardest to keep the precious air in my lungs, but it was worthless. My lungs were on fire, and it forced my mouth open, and cold saltwater rushed in. My vision grew black around the edges. My fingertips lost feeling. This was it, and I let it go, because there were worse ways to go. 

My everything was black, but then I felt a force shove me up, and I was convinced for a second that it was the afterlife. Except I felt air touch my cheeks. 

I wanted to open my eyes and face whatever had saved me, but I still didn’t have enough strength. I felt something against my back, and in the next moments, there was an incredible power that pressed against my lungs, and the burning was back. 

There was a thud, thud, thud, and then more pressure against my lungs. Thud, thud, thud, and pressure. Thud, thud, thud, pressure. A trickle of water passed itself from my lips. I coughed to dispel more water, and my eyes opened. For the briefest of moments, I saw my rescuer, but exhaustion crashed over me.  
I was passed out on the sand before I could register anything else. 

 

I woke up to warmth and burrowed into the covers, only to groan as every muscle in my body protested. “Hey, there,” I heard, followed by a rush of footsteps. I opened my eyes, which was no easy feat. “Take it easy, Miss Andrews.” 

“What happened?” I asked. 

I recognized the footsteps as the commanding officer of the Park Rangers, Mr. Worthing. “I have no idea,” he said. “We found you on the banks of the river. Can you tell us what you remember?” 

I looked around to see that there were a few more rangers in the room. “My canoe tipped over. Someone pulled me out of the water, and gave me CPR. Did you see them?” 

“No,” Mr. Worthing huffed. “Looks like he’s your guardian angel.” 

“Yeah,” I huffed. I was already feeling the after effects of my brush with death so soon after waking up. I protested, but I was asleep again on the cot. 

 

After a few more hours of rest, one of the rangers took me home, and I slept better than I ever have. Maybe Worthing was right, and there really was a guardian angel on my side. The notion was a bit absurd, but the thought was nice. 

In the morning, I woke up with even sorer muscles. When in the bathroom to take a shower, I did an inspection in the mirror. My sternum was the color of a plum, and I prodded at it, only to immediately wince. Whoever my supposed guardian angel was, he was strong-incredibly strong, and not that great at the protection aspect of his job. 

The days went by, and I tried my hardest to remember who the man was, but the more time that passed, the more the simple glimpse of his face evaded me. And so, as most things do, life continued on. My guardian angel remained a mystery, and I supposed that was how it was meant to be between us. 

 

I woke up on a Thursday to see that my sternum was now a faded green color, which was disgusting, but it meant that I could probably leave my house without cursing every breathe that took residence in my lungs. I pulled on a pair of running shoes and took off towards the forest. 

There really was nothing better in this world than a lung full of air straight from the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and as much as I hated running sometimes, water was out of the question, and I was much too weak to even consider hiking. 

When I reached my secluded house at the edge of the clearing, the door was cracked open. For the briefest of moments, I’d considered if I’d left it open by mistake, but I remembered the way that the back door creaked as I shut it heading out. I slowed my breathing and slowly crept up to my car. As quietly as I could, I grabbed a tire iron from the trunk, and even quieter still, I went to my cracked front door. 

I nudged the door open with my foot as slowly as to not cause alarm to whoever was in the house. The front room was clear, and the office on the other side was left untouched. I stepped quietly into the kitchen, where I heard the fridge open. I moved into the kitchen and raised the tire iron above my shoulder, despite the protest that my chest gave. 

The pantry was ransacked. All the cabinets had been rummaged through. The counter had empty containers of leftovers splayed throughout. And standing at the fridge was a man who seemed entirely too familiar drinking from the carton with a gloved hand and holding a cold drumstick in the other. “Didn’t anyone teach you to use a glass?” I asked. 

The man froze and turned toward me. His eyes traveled to the tire iron poised toward him, and in a burst of recollection, the man’s identity came to me. 

“Drop it,” he growled. His voice was laced in danger and strength. I stayed exactly where I was with my measly weapon above me. “Do it now, and I won’t hurt you.” 

“I already know you won’t hurt me.” 

“What makes you think that?” He laughed as he said this, and his laugh was dark. “I could crush you without blinking. Drop. The. Tire. Iron.” 

I kept my posture still. Then, in a split second, he had me pressed the door of the pantry with a strong hand across my chest. The tire iron, milk, and drumstick were all dropped on the floor. The pain in my chest returned with a vengeance. I winced, and he caught that. “I won’t hurt you?” he asked, mocking my words from earlier. There was a sick way that he said it, as if he was glad I'd been mistaken. 

“I guess I was wrong,” I huffed. “I must have assumed that you meant it when you pulled me from the river.”

The pressure on my chest lightened, but barely. His bloodshot blue eyes held recognition, but not trust. “You’re running,” I stammered. “I can help you.” 

Then his arm pressed back on my chest, and he looked angry. “How do you know that?” he growled. “Are you one of them?” He pressed his arm on me, unrelenting, waiting for my answer. 

“No,” I gasped. “No. Your clothes are dirty, and you look like you haven’t slept in weeks. You ransacked my kitchen, because you’re hungry. You’re a runaway, and I just live here. That’s it, I swear.” He seemed the slightest convinced. “Are you still hungry?” 

He nodded. 

“Let me make you something,” I offered. He looked for a second that he was contemplating something, but then he took a step back. I made a move toward the stove, and he stiffened. “I’m just gonna make a grilled cheese. Do you like grilled cheese?” He stopped, nodded, and relaxed again. “Okay, good, because that's all I'm doing.” 

I grabbed a pan and began working. The guardian angel stayed true to his title and watched over me like at any second, I was going to go rabid and swing at him, which was ridiculous because he wasn’t wrong when he said that he could crush me. It was evident enough by the new and old bruises on my chest. 

I stacked three sandwiches on a plate and carried them over to the man who had now migrated to my kitchen table, but looked no less threatening. I turned to get a glass of water, but he grabbed my arm before I could get very far. “Where do you think you’re going?” The grip he had on my wrist was tight. 

“I’m just getting you some water,” I said. My eyes were wide, and I was terrified, but I kept a level head as best I could. Losing my cool with him was going to probably get me killed. 

“Okay.” 

I dug in the cabinet for a cup and filled it with water. When I brought it to the man, nearly two of the three sandwiches were gone. The guardian angel could eat, and for a second, it almost seemed to me that he was not human. For a second, I thought he really was an angel, but angels didn't act like rabid animals. 

“Do you need anything else?” 

“No…thank you.”

Maybe rabid animals could have manners. 

In a space of time shorter than a minute, he had downed the glass of water and demolished the last sandwich. Then he looked around and pinned me with his gaze.  
It was in this moment that I caught what I had been trying to remember since waking up in the ranger’s station. His dark hair was greasy, and it was in desperate need of a trim. His clothes and face were covered in dirt. The angel’s dark blue eyes were bloodshot. He was so tired, and I wasn’t sure if it was a life debt thing, but I needed to help him if I was ever going to get sleep at night. 

And that was what prompted me to say, “I have an extra bed and shower. They're yours if you need them.” Which you do. But I kept that comment to myself. I wasn’t entirely sure how far his tolerance for rude went. Besides, my sternum and I had no desire to be back against the wall. 

“Okay,” he said. “Sure.” 

I nodded, and he stood up, which was quite possibly the most menacing thing to ever have happened to me. My eyes made a slow travel from his shoes upward. Even in threadbare clothes whose only purpose served to conceal, he was danger personified. My eyes continued their climb, and met his, only to see them staring down at me like prey. I suppressed a shudder and moved toward the other side of the house, where my brief house guest would be stationed. 

His boots thudded behind me, and with each step, I felt the weight of what I was doing. At best, letting a man have a place to sleep. It was nice enough, but at worse, I was harboring a crazy fugitive. There was a slim chance that this would end well, but I was bound by a stupid sense of duty. 

I opened a door and felt him way too close to me as I did this. I suppose personal space became obsolete when becoming a runaway. “This is the guest room,” I said, gesturing to the tiny room. “Across the hall is the bathroom.” 

He brushed past me and swept through the room. He was checking for something, and it looked like-a sweep! My angel was some kind of trained military man, but I didn’t know enough to say what branch or kind. 

This recollection brought with it a new sense of fear, and where I should have kept my mouth shut, I asked, “Who are you?” 

He ignored me and moved onto the bathroom. When he was certain that there weren’t any threats, he emerged, and I grabbed his arm. He froze and looked at me directly. His gaze was set more menacing than before. “Who are you?” 

His only response was to growl. It was meant to scare me, and it worked too well. 

I let go of his arm and held it up with palms up. “I won’t tell anyone you’re here as long as you do the same,” I offered. “I’m Abby.”

“James.” 

With that, he shoved past me and went into the bathroom. The door shut with a slam, and I held down the urge to jump, instead I only stared after the door in incredulity. The sound of running water shook me from my reverie, and I went to the linen closet to get a towel. 

From a box deep in the closet, I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that could be big enough, but there was still a possibility that the ma-James could bend his legs and they would tear at the seams. I hastily closed the box and shoved it back into its place in the corner of the closet before a nasty sense of nostalgia begged me to peer further. 

I folded the clothes and towel and placed them outside the bathroom door. I knocked once on the hard wood surface. The water stopped. “I brought you a towel and a change of clothes. Dinner will be ready in a few hours.” James didn’t say anything, and the water shut back on. 

Ok. Fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok. Thoughts?


	2. Born from Rain and Evergreen Trees

After the adrenaline wore off, I found myself sitting on the edge of my bed. I was so incredibly tired, but those things happen after adrenaline rushes. My fatigue was also the byproduct of the run that I went on before finding my menacing intruder. It seemed like an eternity ago that I had went on that run, but it was barely an hour. 

I passed time with a shower. Luckily, there was still hot water left. It was relaxing to be under a running current. I could finally breathe, and this gave me the clear head that I hadn’t had when confronted earlier. 

When my shower was over, I tied my unruly, wet hair back and dressed. Dinner was my next objective, and I moved into the kitchen, which felt like a mistake, because in my post-adrenaline induced haze, I seemed to forget that that the kitchen was a mess. I got to work, picking up the containers and reorganizing the fridge. Judging by the amount of food that was no longer in the kitchen, James had to have been starving when he broke into my house. I felt a small sense of pity for him, which was kind of strange because I’m pretty sure that I was threatened four times in the last hour. 

My kitchen was clean, and the tire iron was back in my trunk. There was the strangest semblance of normal, but I ruined it by heading to the bathroom. Here there was evidence that there really was a man in my house. A pile of dirty laundry sat in the sink. To say that it stunk was an understatement, and my pity for James grew. 

Dinner was frozen pizzas, as it was among the only things that weren’t eaten in my kitchen. I expected the smell of the pizza to draw James from the kitchen, but the door stayed closed. I served myself a slice, and still, I ate alone. It wasn’t like I was new to that, but it was strange when I knew that there was someone else in my house. 

When I was sure that no one would be joining me, a left a plate of pizza outside his bedroom and went to my bed. 

Sleep evaded me tonight. 

The reason for which was almost entirely because of my house guest, and it was a night of worrying. I worried that he would get sleep. I worried that he would eat something. I worried that I would wake up, and he would have moved on. I worried that I would wake up and my whole house would be in shambles-not unlike the kitchen. 

I worried that I wouldn’t wake up at all. 

But I did end up going to sleep. And it wasn’t a restful night. I tossed and turned endlessly, and every few hours I woke up. I became convinced that the only way I would truly sleep would be to convince myself that the last week of my life was only a nightmare that kept occurring. 

The canoe flipping over was a nightmare. Almost dying was a nightmare. Coming back to life was a nightmare. The bruise, the intruder, the soldier, the newfound loneliness - they were all part of a nightmare, and my imagination had reached new heights. 

 

I woke up to rain. Normally, this would make people upset, but I couldn’t remember being happier because of that fact. Rain was one of the top reasons that I decided to make the Pacific Northwest my new home. The skies were gray, and to some, the rain here induced sadness, but the grey sky was like a down comforter. As long as it was raining, and the woods were around me, I was home. So far nothing had come close to that feeling. 

I got up and prepared myself for a comfortable day at home. I stood in front of the mirror and reached for a brush when a pain that I was sure wasn’t real, rushed through my chest. I tentatively pulled the hem of my shirt up to see a blooming bruise taking shape across my chest. 

I froze. 

That wasn’t supposed to be there, but it was. The bruise was real. 

A recollection of memories rushed over me, and I staggered back from my mirror. 

The canoe flipping over was real. Almost dying was real. Coming back to life was real. The intruder, the soldier, the newfound loneliness - they were all real, and my imagination was as bland as I had always lead it to be. 

With a distrustful attitude toward my own memories, I made way to the guest room. As much as I wanted to find the room empty, a small part of me hoped that James was real, and I knew it was the part of me that craved the sparse human contact I allowed myself.

I slowly turned the knob and peered in to the room. The bed was in the same condition that I left it in, and I sighed. Okay, I told myself, good. There was no one else in my house. This was both a good and a bad thing. 

I almost turned back and shut the door behind me when something caught my eye. A figure was crouched against a wall that faced both the door and the window-asleep. 

And it was real. 

I stayed staring at the man sleeping until I felt a rush of unease-like I was the intruder in this situation. My feet carried me away from the door, until they knocked against the plate that was left. It still had the dinner on it from last night. This either meant James had an aversion to cold pizza, which didn’t seem likely, as he demolished my fridge full of leftovers. The only likely explanation was that James hadn’t woken up at all. The bruise-like dark circle around his eyes told me that all too clearly that his body was desperate for rest. 

I backed away, and I left the soldier sleeping on the floor. 

The beat of the rain on the windows was the beat of a drum roll that seemed to point to something, and it fueled further anxiety. Breakfast passed. Lunch passed. My day passed with no importance. The soldier stayed asleep. 

My job as an overseer of the Olympic National Park is tedious. My official title in the National Park Service has been long forgotten. Really, I am a watered down park ranger, but there is nowhere else I can think to be. So, I stay here. 

The woods are my home. There was once a joke in the ranger’s station that I just appeared one day in the forests. I laughed with the rest of them. The truth stayed tucked away, but I changed into that. The girl born from rain and evergreen trees. She was easy to be, and her past was easy. 

I shucked off my rain boots and jacket by the back door after my weekly inspection had finished. I was setting another layer of clothing on the back of my couch, when I saw someone lurking in my kitchen. 

“Where were you?” He growled. That voice still sent shocks through me, but I found that after a day, the shocks had abated. 

James moved across the floor toward me from the kitchen in a stride that left meant death in its wake. It was no less than terrifying, but I kept a stony resolution, as certainly two could play that game. “It’s good to see that you’re awake,” I smirked. 

“Where were you?” His gaze had grown more narrowed, and it was clear by his demeanor that he had no mind for pleasantries. I would have rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t sure what the consequence for that could be. 

“I’m an overseer,” I answered. By this point, the soldier was a pace away from me. “I was doing my job. No one knows you’re here. You’re safe.” I, however, made no promises about myself. I could tell that I had barely scratched the surface of the soldier. 

James’ countenance lifted, but only barely. “And you?” 

“What about me?” 

“Who knows you’re here?” the soldier asked. 

“Just a few park rangers,” I answered. He seemed only the slightest bit more comfortable with the conversation between us, and I moved toward the kitchen to work on dinner. “As long as I do my job, I don’t see them. We have a combined agreement of solitude.” I turned back to my living room to see the soldier, but he had moved with me into the kitchen. 

“Have you eaten?” And that’s when I’d seen what my terror had been preventing. 

Coming out of James’ left shirt sleeve was a casing of metal around his arm. At the top of its gleaming surface was a red triangle, but through the white cotton was the rest of a red star. There was a tiny twitch in the surface, and I realized that the casing was no casing at all. 

No-James had a real metal arm. An arm made of metal. My eyes widened, and when the soldier took note of this, he wrenched it back behind his back as much as he could. I flicked my eyes up to his, and for a brief moment, I saw shame, but it was covered up with a guarded blankness. 

“I’m sorry-I,” I stammered, but it did nothing. James was a brick wall with no hopes of being torn down. He did not respond, and I expected this. “Have you eaten anything today?” 

“No,” he grunted. Well, it was better than a growl. 

“Dinner should be ready fairly soon,” I said, surveying the contents of my pantry. It was sparse to say the least, but the beauty of chili is that almost anything can be put into it and called chili. “I would offer you a snack, but all the snack-ish foods that I had got eaten.” I said so with a smirk, but when my eyes locked onto James’, he looked toward the floor. 

Eager to excuse myself from the awkward moment, I got to work on chili and cornbread. James had moved from standing behind me menacingly to sitting down at my kitchen table menacingly. I sensed that there would be no room for small talk. That kind of thing only served the purpose of wasted time to a soldier. So, we existed in uncomfortable silence-at least, it was uncomfortable on my end. To James, uncomfortable probably was comfortable. 

When the chili was finished, I brought a bowl to the soldier, and we ate in a slightly less uncomfortable silence. Maybe James’ vocal cords were bruised. They sounded fine when he graced me with his speech. In a moment of bravery, I spoke, “I washed your clothes from yesterday. I’ll bring them to you. Do you need any extra pillows or blankets?” 

“No,” he said. James was now on his third bowl of chili, while I was comfortably halfway through my first. Okay, so it had been a while since I had eaten with a male, but there was no way that they were supposed to eat this fast. Surely something of this swallowing magnitude, I would have remembered. 

“Whose clothes are these?” he asked, interrupting my train of thought.

My locked onto his and dropped their gaze to the half-eaten bowl of chili. “My brother’s,” I answered. 

“Where is he?” 

I looked up into the soldier’s eyes and dropped my hands into my lap. “Dead,” I sighed. With that, I stood up from the table and brought my bowl to the sink. He didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t expect him to. 

I was filling a leftover bowl with chili, when I heard James from behind me. I heard him place his bowl in the sink, but then he stopped, and I could sense him standing a few feet behind me. “Do you need anything else before I go to bed?” I asked, turning and facing him. 

His eyebrows drew together, and he shook his head. “Okay. Sleep well, then.”  
I put the bowl in the fridge and the pot in the sink. Without looking to him, I walked away to my room. I stopped when I heard a gravelly voice. 

“Why?” 

I turned and James was standing in the same place where I left him. “I’m sorry?” I asked. 

“Why are you letting me stay here?” he asked. He was taking slow steps out of the kitchen towards me. They weren’t the death-steps from earlier, but it didn’t stop a thrill from running through me. “I broke into your house and attacked you. I’m dangerous, and you know that, but you’re letting me stay here. Why?” 

I didn’t have a complete answer to that question, but it didn’t stop me from saying the first thing that came to mind, “You saved my life. I’m trying to return the favor.”

The truth was that I didn’t have a real reason for harboring this man, only that it felt right to do it, as if I would be making a mistake not to.


	3. Cold. Hard. Angry. Lost.

I woke up to the sound of rain. Only much different from yesterday, it wasn’t a torrential downpour. Instead, there was the strange pitter-patter of raindrops that had failed to fall to the earth from yesterday. This was my favorite type of weather. It was still raining-yes, but I could also go outside without being drenched. 

I reached my hands above my head to stretch when a hollow pit of hunger made manifest in my stomach. I wanted to get up and cook something, but sleep still had a few anchors digging into my conscious. I rolled back over, only to be met with a gurgling sound emanating from my stomach. I placed a hand on my offending midriff and sighed, “Ok. You win.” 

With an annoyed huff, I got up from my bed and migrated slowly to the kitchen, rubbing warmth into my arms. I opened the fridge to see absolutely nothing. The same went for the pantry. I had no food, which called for a run to the grocery store. 

I went into my room to put on real clothes and grab my keys. I swung by James’ room and pressed my ear to the door. It felt a great invasion of privacy to peer into the guest room while my guest was sleeping. It was a weird concept, seeing as it was my house, and he was originally an intruder. Still, I couldn’t let myself make my guest uncomfortable in any fashion. To do so would be a disservice. 

Assuring myself that James was asleep, I went outside to my car. It was an inconspicuous sedan, specifically chosen for me to entirely blend into my surroundings. It was made imperatively clear that I not stand out. When I was younger, that rule was harder to follow. Naturally, I am not one to hide away, but my circumstances have given me no choice. 

The closest grocery store is thirty minutes away. Granted, the closest sort of any civilization is just as far away. It is easy enough to deal with as I am-was-the only mouth I had to feed. My typical shopping trip is only a fifteen-minute excursion. With my new guest to consider, I got three times as much food as I thought I would need, and I left the grocery store forty-five minutes after I entered. 

I ran few more errands and headed back home to the forest. I pulled back into my house two and a half hours after I left it. It wasn’t my best time, but at least we had resources. 

I unlocked the front door, only to be met with James glaring at me from his position in the hallway. “Good morning,” I said as pleasantly as could be managed with the world’s most terrifying individual staring holes into my skull from a mere distance of seven yards. It was clear from the way that he didn’t answer that pleasantries weren’t really James’ thing. 

“Umm,” I stammered, “We don’t have food. Well, I mean, we do now. Uh, so I got that and hopefully better fitting clothes.” 

“I woke up and you were gone,” he grunted. “Again.” There was an unspoken message of, see to it that it doesn’t happen again. 

“You were sleep,” I answered, hoping that it would excuse my apparently incorrect actions. The increased ferocity in his expression told me that something so unnecessary as sleep shouldn’t have been an obstacle. “Right, sorry. Next time, I’ll be sure to let you know where I am.” The sarcasm was heavy in my voice, but there wasn’t a change in James’ expression to even suggest that he even picked it up.

There was a heavy silence where daggers of annoyance were shot into my skull, but it ended when I sighed and moved past him to the kitchen, dropping the groceries that I had on the kitchen table. A cycle of back and forth began as I brought in everything from my trunk. After the second time, James graced me by moving from his scowling position in the hallway to bring in the rest of the things. A new conveyor belt started between us where he would hand me an item, and I put it away. We really were the perfect picture of domesticity were it not for the fact that James looked like he had a permanent migraine by the feral, angry look in his eyes. 

And the gleaming metal arm. 

I started on an early lunch of soup when my kitchen was clean. Of course, I wrongfully assumed that James would leave me be, but he chose to stay in the kitchen, standing over me like the giant he was with his arms folded across his chest. His attention was divided in a three-way tie between the knife I was using to cut celery, the flame under the pot, and any movements that I made with my body. James made it clear that nothing was going to slip past him. He also made it just as clear by the way he held himself that if I was a threat, I would be neutralized, and it was as simple as that. 

There were a lot of things that made my house guest scary. The first of which- that could not be discounted- was his metal arm. The upper portion gleamed, like it had been polished for decades by people who were proud to show off their ultra-powerful cyborg soldier. However, it wasn’t the feigned muscle etched into the iron that terrified me, but his fingertips. The metal around them was not gleaming, but a dull grey. They weren’t rounded off like normal fingers either, but flat at their ends.  
All on their own, they were a strong and dangerous weapon. It brought on visions of men being ripped apart by just those fingertips. 

All of his metal arm aside, James himself was a strong and dangerous weapon. His human arm was corded in muscles which I didn’t doubt were very much capable of inflicting serious damage. His stance suggested power and demanded respect to that power. Just one of his thighs were thicker than the width of both of my arms laid side-by-side. All of that combined danger-both arms, legs, stance-was nothing compared to the threat of danger that lurked in his eyes when he took the chance to let me see into them. 

They were not human. Well I suppose that on a biological level these eyes were human, but the nature beyond that was animalistic and feral. He was a predator, and an angry one at that. He was not willing to suffer fools or ignorance or mistakes. He didn’t not have time to waste, because he was on a hunt. 

My problem with all of this was that I was more than halfway sure that by doing some miniscule thing that I would become his prey. If that possibility was to be drawn, it would not be pretty or quick. No-the death that would come from this house guest would be awful and painful. Almost all of this threat was conveyed by his hard, cold, angry, blue eyes. 

In a fit of stupidity, my extroversion got the best of me while pouring a can of condensed milk into the pot, and I spoke, knowing full well that I could very much prod the beast, “Did you sleep well?” 

A grunt. 

To give James more credit, I don’t really know what I expected. 

“If it’s the temperature, I can have the air conditioning turned on or get you some extra blankets,” I added in substation for an answer. “It’s just that I don’t normally turn the A/C on unless I have to, but I can, if you think that will help you.”

“No,” he answered in something that could just as easily be a growl as it could be a bark. “The temperature is fine. I slept well enough.” A pause. “Thank you.” 

There formed a small smile at my lips for two reasons. The first, I made him comfortable (if well enough could be counted as comfortable) which was a formidable success. The second, and it was ridiculous, but I felt the need to celebrate, it was the longest amount of consecutive sentences that James had spoken to me since he broke into my house. 

“You’re very welcome,” I replied. A part of my brain screamed that as long as we stayed relatively civil, of which I was actively trying to find the boundaries of, we could make this living arrangement work for as we needed it to. 

I moved away from the stove once everything was added and leaned against the counter, putting both hands in the pocket of my sweatshirt. A cock of his eyebrow prompted me to say, “I’m waiting for the vegetables to soften. It shouldn’t take too long-probably around twelve minutes.” James nodded and went back to his stance in the middle of this kitchen. He stood straight like it was as natural and restful as sitting was to other people. Though, I gathered that it was probably because standing was both a better offensive and defensive move than sitting could hope to be. 

“What do you like eating?” I asked. “Or don’t like eating, just so that I can plan accordingly.” 

The feral look in James eyes switched to blank as he looked down toward the tile of the kitchen and furrowed his eyebrows. He looked for a second that he didn’t know what food even was, but that notion was absurd. He looked up and shook his head.  
“I don’t know.” The look in his eyes was forlorn. In a space of ten seconds, he had transformed from a terrifying animal into a lost child. 

“Luckily for us, living in seclusion grants me time and loneliness in equal measure,” I said with an ironic smirk. “I’m sure than given that, we can find out what foods you do and don’t like.” 

For the smallest of moments, I swore a saw a moment of hope in the feral, lost eyes. 

For the smallest of moments, I swore I felt a spark of hope of my own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that you all hate me. I would hate me too. It's been two and a half weeks since I updated, and the update isn't even long. I wanted to write something so bad, but I made myself write a chapter of my real book before I could even touch this because productivity.


End file.
